


inside, this place is warm

by forgottendialect



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, post 3x19/20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1584470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgottendialect/pseuds/forgottendialect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma knows she’s been awful to Regina, but she can't seem to make herself stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	inside, this place is warm

**Author's Note:**

> This came about while I was trying to make sense of the way that show-Emma has been acting this season. And also because I spend my time thinking about Regina and Emma being good for each other literally always.

After the curse breaks, after Regina kisses Henry and their whole world tilts then rights itself – yet again – Emma feels empty. She'd torn Hook a new one – that hangdog expression infuriating her, her chest a furnace over the presumption that it was his place to keep the curse from her, that he had the right to lie to protect her best interests, not to mention the wild assumption that she'd even wanted to kiss him, ever again. And now she's standing outside on the docks, while her parents hold each other and smile, while Regina and Henry walk with sides pressed together, finally reunited, while this Robin guy that Regina is supposedly dating (and it should probably be a warning bell, how much that trips her up – that she can't fathom the idea of Regina dating somebody, when really, why shouldn't she?) walks beside them, a hand on Regina's back.

Emma trails behind them all, one step out of synch with their happiness. 

It's Regina who notices – always notices – and slows to turn toward Emma, catching her eye over the top of their son's head. Henry is looking up at her – not even craning his neck like he used to, and god, their little boy is getting tall – and Regina is looking at Emma like she can see into her. 

“You should come over, later. I'll cook something.” It's said with a half-sad smile, a kindness and empathy in her eyes that Emma pretended Regina wasn't capable of, but always knew that she was. 

Emma looks at them, mother and son with that same hopeful expression on their faces, and it shouldn't hurt, but oh, it does. Like Henry has walked away from her. Like everyone does. It's a vicious kind of irony, this white-hot possessiveness she has over Henry now, this completely torn-apart and cheated feeling, knowing that she has to share him. She knows what Regina must have felt like now, when Emma first came to town, but she can't seem to channel that insight into not feeling so desperate, so hurt. So it's Regina she looks at when she bites, “So, he's just going home with you?” 

Regina's mouth tightens and her hand closes around Henry's jacket a little tighter, possessive like Emma knows she's trying not to be. Her voice is strained with the effort to keep it light. “It's been a year, Emma.”

Emma feels bad immediately, because she knows the pain Regina's in. She flushes, and nods. “I'll come by at three?”

Regina smiles, kinder than Emma deserves, and says, “Alright.”

 

-

 

Emma knows she’s been awful to Regina, but she can't seem to make herself stop. She's so confused and mixed up and she can't get her feelings straight, and it makes her snippy and angry and lash out. Regina saved her, saved them all. She gave Emma this perfect life, the life she'd always wanted, and could never have had: happy and warm and loving, in that bright apartment in New York City, waking up every morning and eating breakfast with Henry grinning at her from across the table. It was bliss, and even though Emma knows it wasn't really real, it still felt real. It was real, for a year. 

To have that life ripped away from her, to be back in Storybrooke with magic and wars and curses – it's devastating, and unfair, and she feels like screaming every second of the day because this wasn't what she wanted. She wanted that life – her, and Henry, and New York. Not Storybrooke, and the Savior, and a son who is pulling away from her because she's not even a very good mother without the framework of Regina's memories to guide her.

So Emma looks at Regina and sees the woman who raised her son, who sacrificed everything for him, who gave Emma her happy ending. But then Emma looks at Regina, and there, too, is the reason she's been dragged back into this life, the reason she's half-lost Henry again. The reason she doesn't have Henry and New York, but instead parents who treat her like their personal, curse-breaking errand girl, and a pirate who treats her like she owes him something just because he likes her. And she hates it. 

So she lashes out, angry at Regina for having a goddamn half-sister who is messing with all their lives, angry with her for not being able to fix it, angry that the curse she swore was a brick wall between their realms was really just a small moat that a one-handed pirate could sail across, with a memory potion ready to take everything away from her, all over again.

It's worse than before, like an ice bath after heat, coming from her perfect little life back to this; to a son who isn't all hers, anymore; to parents who are there, but not really there for her, already growing her replacement, and she can't talk to them honestly, can't explain all the awful things she feels, because she can't afford to give them any more reason to pull away from her. 

And then there's Regina, looking at Henry with desperate, hungry eyes, and so much love. Regina who, she knows, will never not be there. Regina who has no choice but to stick around, to keep fighting, every day, for Henry's sake. And as unfair as it is, it makes her the only safe target for Emma's ire, for her frustration and her fear and her anger at her whole life. It's not fun and invigorating like their fighting has been in the past; it's just hurtful and wounded. And Regina doesn't really fight back; she just looks at Emma, and lets the comments pass. Sometimes she wonders if Regina has really changed that much. Most of the time, she thinks that Regina knows exactly what she's doing. And she knows Regina would understand better than anyone else.

(The thing about never having had people who stick around is that when you get them, you don't know how to treat them very well.)

 

-

 

Emma goes back to her parents's apartment after the showdown at the docks. They're meant to be regrouping, figuring out how they're going to deal with Zelena, after this; but instead, Emma lies down on the bed she used to share with Henry, those first few months when he was living with her, and stares at the ceiling. She can hear her parents laughing and talking in the kitchen, had to endure the walk back with them and the explanation of how they were both still alive after casting the dark curse – halving their hearts, and God, it's almost sickeningly too much. Sometimes their love feels too big for the small space of the apartment, especially now, withMary Margaret's oversized belly swelling between them, too big for Emma to exist in as well, and she feels all elbows and knees as she tries desperately to fit into their life. 

She leaves half an hour early for her invitation to Regina's, desperate to be alone (while dreading it), because she can't think, doesn't know what she's going to do, doesn't know how she's going to be the Savior – again – when all she wants to do is lie down in a quiet room and rest for a while. She walks the long way round to Regina's house, but the town is only so big, and it's still only quarter to when finds herself at 108 Mifflin. 

Regina opens the door, letting out heat and the aroma of something baking and the hum of the music playing deeper inside the house. She smiles in greeting, and Emma feels herself smile back, slightly but involuntarily. Then she hears Henry's voice call, “Is that Ma?” from inside, and she feels like she could cry. Regina steps aside to let her in and Emma calls “Hey, kid” as she takes off her boots, dirty from tracking through mud on the way here, and leaves them abandoned next to Henry's near the door. 

Emma rounds the corner into the kitchen and Henry jumps out of his seat at the kitchen bench, where he'd been eating what looks like healthy afternoon snack – and of course, Regina was the kind of mother who would make her son healthy afternoon snacks – and barrels into Emma. She laughs and clutches him tighter, then wants to cry because this is happier than he's been in weeks, and oh, he was unhappy. 

Regina comes up behind her then, and ghosts her fingers across Emma's back as she moves around to the other side of the kitchen. “Henry has just been telling me all about the school he went to in New York”, she supplies gently, like she knows that Emma is struggling. 

“Oh, he is, is he?” Emma smiles as Henry pulls back to sit down again, smiles softer when Regina motions her to the chair beside him. “Did he tell you about the turtle already?” 

Regina quirks an eyebrow and Henry exclaims, “Oh my god, I didn't tell you about the turtle!” Then he's off, talking about his class's pet turtle and how it went missing one afternoon and then Ronnie Jacobs got caught carrying him around in his backpack because he wanted to take it home to see if it would breed with his pet hamster and make a 'turt-ster', and “Ronnie was pretty dumb, Mom, I mean, they're not even both mammals”, and Regina is looking at Henry like it's the most important story she's ever heard, like every word that comes out of his mouth is more precious than gold. She's smiling at him with shining eyes, her hands frozen on the sides of the kitchen bench, and Emma's heart feels like it might burst. The kitchen is a little bubble of warmth and happiness and so much love, and she never wants to leave it. 

She drags herself away, though, when Henry asks to visit Neal's grave – his solemn eyes every reason Emma didn't really want him to get his memories back. Regina opts to stay behind, wordlessly communicating with Emma via that mom-gaze they now share. Emma knows Regina regrets Neal's death, for Henry's sake and maybe, probably, for Emma's, but that doesn't mean she'll go and pay her respects at his grave. 

Regina kisses Henry's forehead, barely having to bend down, anymore. She smiles at him with that wide-open, adoring smile, and promises to have dinner ready when he gets home. Emma vaguely wonders how Regina can be without her heart when she can see it in her eyes every time she looks at their son.

 

-

 

They defeat Zelena with white magic and Regina saves all of them, yet again. 

When they get back to the hospital, Henry launches himself at Regina, his cry of “I knew you could do it, mom!” muffled by her coat. The spike of jealousy that runs through Emma is ugly and cruel, but she can't push it down. She's not her son's only savior, anymore. (She's not the woman who raised him, either.)

David and Mary Margaret stay in the hospital with Emma's new baby brother, safe and unhurt, and exercising a mean set of lungs. Snow is crying with relief, clutching the baby to her, while Charming holds them both, and it's good and Emma's happy, but she can't make herself step inside the room. 

When she turns to leave, Hook is still standing behind her. Crowding her. She glares him away when he tries to speak to her, angry that he'd been responsible for stripping her of her magic, just because she didn't want him to die. He retreats, for once, without a fight – probably to go and dry his clothes, which are still damp from Zelena's impromptu outdoor dip and starting to smell worse than ever. 

Emma slips away from the door and moves back toward her family – toward Henry, where he's still standing with Regina. The rest of the crowd that always seems to linger around the Charmings in moments of crisis has mostly dispersed.

Moving away from Henry for a moment, Regina kisses Robin but then says she wants some time to herself. Gracious (and bland) as always, he leaves with the others, and then it's just the three of them. 

Regina catches Emma's eye and tilts her head with a small smile, as if to say 'let's get moving'. Emma falls into step beside her as they leave the hospital, not wanting to question whether or not Regina meant for her to come with them, in case she didn't. Regina doesn't say anything, though. Just walks in silence next to her.

Henry bounds along ahead of them with enthusiasm belying his age, circling back like an excited puppy while babbling about white magic and how cool it is that both his moms can use it. Slowing, Emma catches Regina's hand with the tips of her fingers, for a moment. Regina's expression is open, curious, when she looks up at her, and Emma says, quietly so Henry doesn't overhear; “I'm really glad you didn't have to kill her. I mean, I know she was trying to hurt us, and she's obviously got some issues, but... I don't know. Maybe now you can get to know your sister.”

Regina's eyes go dark and soft, and she grips Emma's hand tighter for a moment before looking up at Henry, a few feet ahead of them. She smiles, a little, and glances at Emma: “I hope so.”

 

-

 

It's late when they get back to Regina's house, and they're all starting to tire, so Regina makes them chicken salad sandwiches for dinner and they eat them at the dining room table in an odd, tired but wired kind of haze. 

After Regina has denied Henry's hopeful request to have a second soda with it, he wolfs down the rest of his second sandwich and declares he's going to go shower and read in his room. The exchange is nothing, but it's so fond and normal. Emma watches Regina close her eyes and breathe the moment in as Henry bounds up the stairs, like he'd never left. 

They sit in silence for a while, drinking the wine that Regina poured them, and then Emma gathers the courage to stop being so bitter and offers, “You were great out there today.” 

Regina looks up at her in surprise, then blushes a tiny bit along her cheekbones. It's oddly delicate for the former mayor, no longer larger than life, but if there's anything Emma knows it's the awkwardness of being labeled 'hero'. She shrugs with one shoulder, smiles with one corner of her mouth. “I didn't know I was capable of that.” 

“Henry knew.” Regina smiles, all soft and proud that her son believes in her. Emma adds, jokingly, “He's smarter than both of us.” Regina snorts. It's quick and undignified, but Emma likes that Regina can be undignified around her.

They sit and drink, for a little while, hiding smiles behind the rims of their glasses. Then Regina tilts her head and looks at Emma, eyes calculating but still kind. 

“And your magic?” 

Emma frowns, and waves an ineffectual hand in the air. Focuses her hardest to bring her power forth, but there's nothing. “Still gone.” 

“Hmm,” Regina says. 

“Shouldn't it be back by now? I mean, if Zelena's power is gone, shouldn't that curse have... gone with it? That's kind of how it...” Emma trails off. That's how it would work in a fairytale, Emma almost says. 

“Magic is still a little different here,” Regina says, but she doesn't sound too worried. Then she takes one hand off her wine glass, and reaches out to rest it, palm up, in the middle of the table between them. “Maybe it just needs a little kick.”

That old spark is back in her eyes, enticing but not threatening, anymore. Emma stares at her hand in confusion until Regina wiggles her fingers slightly, and then it hits her. How Emma's touch brought Regina's magic surging back to the surface when the first curse broke. 

Emma wipes the palm of her hand against her skirt – wonders why it's sweaty – and then sticks her arm out to Regina with a 'here goes nothing' kind of carelessness. 

It happens as soon as their skin touches. Of course. Emma's magic roars through her veins, suddenly appearing, bright and hot, where she knows it wasn't a minute ago. And how does Emma keep forgetting this? That their magic works around each other? That they're so much stronger together?

Letting go of Regina's hand, Emma shouts, “hah!” victoriously, like a child, and she hears Regina laugh through the haze of magic flushing her cheeks and clouding her eyes. Somewhere along the line she'd stopped being afraid of her magic and started clinging to it, as something that was hers. Now that it was back, she realised how empty she'd felt without it. 

Elated, Emma jumps up, and before she realises what she's doing she's hopped around the table and thrown her arms around Regina. 

Regina lets out a little 'oof!' of surprise. Emma's not a hugging person. Neither of them are really hugging people, except with Henry. Emma blames this on the magic. When she pulls back, Regina's cheek brushes against hers, warm and soft. 

“Uh,” Emma says. “Sorry.” 

Regina shakes her head, still smiling. “It's good to see you happy.”

Emma's still standing a little too close, Regina's eyes a little too bright, and the fight is over (again) and she can relax and breathe and not have to be more than she really is. Emma is happy. 

She commits to the feeling (and her own stupidity) and kisses Regina. 

When she pulls back after a moment (not long enough), Emma is stunned at her own recklessness. Regina's mouth is hanging slightly open, and she looks shocked, but her eyes are so dark, and as soon as Emma catches Regina glancing at her mouth she's leaning back in again. Regina surges forward, this time, and Emma grabs at her hips, and then Regina's body is pressed up against hers and everything gets a lot more serious.

For all the shit between them, it's never been about a lack of heat.

Regina tugs at her hair and kisses her fiercely and makes these little noises in the back of her throat that make Emma feel so powerful. Dimly, Emma's brain registers the sound of the shower going on upstairs, but then her whole world is narrowed down to the feel of Regina's mouth, and Regina's body, so warm and so soft and yet solid, pushing as she pulls. 

There's a swirl of smoke around them – purple-white, and Emma wants to laugh, because does this mean Regina's intentions towards her aren't very pure? - and then they're transported to Regina's bedroom. Emma chuckles, scoffs “That was a little forward” against Regina's mouth. Regina bites her lower lip in retribution. Emma's traitorous knees go week as she spares a moment to think, of course, she's a biter. 

Then Emma's pants are gone and Regina's shoving her down on the bed and Emma's brain shuts up completely.

It's over embarrassingly quickly, for Emma, but she's so wound up and so exhausted and Regina's hands on her feel like heaven. Regina takes longer, and Emma's got no idea if she's actually doing anything right and is about to stop and ask when Regina whimpers and moans and then goes boneless against her. 

“Oh.” Emma says. Regina throws an arm across her eyes and laughs. 

 

-

 

They're dozing, afterwards, which is not something Emma is usually comfortable with. But, whatever, it's night time anyway, and Regina's bed is ridiculously comfortable. They'll need to get dressed again soon, but for now Henry's shower's still running, and Emma feels like she can breathe again for the first time in a week.

Regina has twined their hands together in the sheets between their bodies, and she's running a thumb slowly back and forth across Emma's knuckles, and Emma blurts out, “We should move to New York.” 

“What?” Brows furrowed, Regina moves so that she can look at Emma's face. Emma feels herself going red, curses her post-coital lack of brain-to-mouth filter, but doesn't let herself backtrack now that she's said it. (She realises she really does want to say it.)

She rolls toward Regina a little, the sheets rustling in the quiet room. “I've been thinking that maybe we should go back to New York. Henry and I had a really good life, you know. During that year. And I think you'd like it, there.”

Regina still looks puzzled, but not so cautious as Emma would have been if someone suggested they just up and move across the coast. “My life is here,” she says. 

“Your life is Henry,” Emma points out.

Regina tilts her head in concession. 

“You gave him the best life there,” Emma whispers to Regina's chin, tucking her head closer. “Friends and a great school and a good life. We could go back there. Just the three of us. Pretend to be normal.” Regina smiles, then, and Emma is encouraged. “Think about it. There'd be no curses, no old nemeses, no complicated family members, just … us and Henry.” 

Regina smiles again, looking baffled and flushes. “I'll think about it.” 

Something takes flight in Emma's chest. “You will? Really?”

“He was happy there. And you're not happy here.”

“How can you tell?”

Regina's eyes are deep and dark. “I know what that kind of unhappiness looks like. And I know you.”

Emma flushes, mumbles, “Yeah.” And she does; it used to aggravate Emma to no end, that Regina could see through her, that she was usually right. But now she allows herself to think that maybe that's not so bad, when it comes to this. 

After a long moment of listening to Regina breathe, she confesses; “It's just really hard, you know? I don't know how to be happy.” 

Regina chuffs out a sad little laugh, and pulls her closer. Her voice is wry, but warm. “If there's anything I understand, dear, it's that feeling.” 

Emma shifts, not wanting to ruin the mood but desperate to articulate that ache beneath her ribs that's been there since she got her memories back. 

“It's so hard to be happy here. It's hard to be happy for them.” Regina doesn't have to ask who 'them' is, and it's another reason Emma's so grateful for her. “And it's really hard to know that I was just a nobody, an orphan kid and a single mom in that year you gave me, but I was so much happier there than I am here. Having parents and being the savior and... everything else. I don't -” her voice breaks, a little bit, and she cuts herself off.

Regina starts stroking her back, slow, soothing ups and downs. “I'm sorry,” she whispers after a moment. Emma hides her face in a pillow, scolds herself for wanting to cry because she should be happy, she has a family and a place here, and people who love and need her, and isn't that what she always wanted? It only makes her want to cry more, and then she wants to slap herself because this is the first time she and Regina have ever slept together, after three years of barely tolerating each other, and now Emma is lying in her bed and almost crying and asking her to move to another city with her. She's a nightmare. 

“Sorry,” she chokes out eventually, “I'm being so weird. I think it's just the adrenaline or whatever.” But when she risks a look at her face, Regina doesn't seem to be freaked out or annoyed. She just looks sad.

“Are you going to run?” 

Emma lifts herself up on her elbows to look Regina square in the eye when she swears, “No. I go where Henry goes.” Then, after a moment to realise that isn't necessarily reassuring, given their history, given the plans she's been thinking of making, lately; “And Henry stays with you. I'm not going to take him away from you.” She tries to show Regina she means it. Then, when she thinks Regina's eyes have calmed again, and god, whoever knew eyes could be so expressive? she adds, “Maybe with you, though.” 

Regina smiles again. Emma has never seen her smile so many times in one day. “I said I'd think about it.”

“Good.” Emma says, lying down again, satisfied. 

Down the hall, the shower shuts off, and they hear Henry clomp his way from the bathroom to his bedroom. Regina waves a hand without moving from the bed, and the lock on her bedroom door clicks shut. Just for a little longer.

It's a couple of minutes of peaceful silence before Regina speaks up again, and even though her question makes Emma tense, the fact that she's apparently been thinking it over the whole time she's been silent makes hope blossom in Emma's chest. 

“What about your parents?”

Emma shrugs. “It doesn't mean I'd never see them. We'd all just have to travel. They could learn how to use Skype.” 

“Your mother could send messages via pigeon,” Regina can't help snarking. Emma shoves her lightly with an elbow under the covers. 

“Lots of thirty year olds live more than a couple of states away from their parents.” That equation usually applies to thirty year olds who have known their parents for more than a few years, but Emma's not going to nit-pick. “And they'll get used to it. I mean, they'll be pretty busy with the new baby for like, eighteen years now, anyway.” Regina makes a wordless noise but doesn't contradict her; they both know the timing of Snow and Charming's decision to have a new baby would never feel like anything other than replacement. 

They lie there for a little longer, and then something occurs to Emma. 

“What about Robin Hood?”

Regina strokes Emma's hair away from her forehead, and says, “I hardly know him.” 

The unspoken gets to Emma, anyway: he might be someone, to Regina, but Emma and Henry mean more. 

“It would be a fresh start,” Emma says quietly, after a long moment, her breath fanning out across Regina's shoulder where they're not-quite-cuddling. “We deserve that, don't you think?”

She can feel Regina's hum of approval through their touching skin. “That would be something.”

Noise filters in to them as Henry moves around his old room, thumps and crashes indicating that he's probably reorganising everything Regina has kept so perfectly preserved since they landed back in Storybrooke. I'm too old for Iron Man sheets, Mom, he'd said earlier, in such a teenage tone, but still leapt up to snatch his Iron Man figurine from her when she'd tried to move it away to the bookshelf. 

Emma closes her eyes, and lets herself soak in the feeling of lying there in the big, warm room, listening to her son move around down the hall, Regina's body soft next to hers, her hands in Emma's hair. Something inside of her breathes, and settles, and she thinks, oh. This feels like home. 

 

-


End file.
